ESPN college football analyst Paul Finebaum is not a fan of “pathetic journalism”. Or perhaps Finebaum thinks he should be the only one making rumored coaching hire hot takes. Seems like every week for the past month or more he has been calling for coaches to leave or get fired.
According to On3, last week the Centre Daily Times’ Jon Sauber reported that second year Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer had become Penn State’s top coaching candidate. The issue with that is DeBoer coaches Alabama who is in a playoff pursuit and he hasn’t been there very long.
During an appearance on McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning on ESPN, Finebaum decided to undress that report. Including the bold take of “pathetic state of reporting and journalism”.
“I know this would be a good time for me to get on a soapbox and give a manifesto on the absolute pathetic state of sports reporting and journalism, but I think that’s already been done. But it just doesn’t take anything nowadays,” Finebaum said. “It just takes hearing something somewhere.”
Finebaum would then double down trying not to blame message boards and painting a picture of random people playing a game of ‘telephone’. While his statements seem a little over the top, he’s not wrong. Social media has given everyone a voice. Many of those voices are simply hearing something, assuming its true and spreading those ideas as if they are confirmed reports.
“You can’t even blame message boards anymore, because I haven’t seen one so long, I don’t really know what they look like. But, it’s just somebody putting something out, and then somebody asking you guys a question or me, and then somebody reporting it as, ‘Oh, Kalen DeBoer’s leaving.’ … I have never heard one ounce of concrete information that indicates Kalen DeBoer is going anywhere.”
Since Sauber’s initial report, he has downgraded DeBoer to the No. 2 Penn State target. Which begs the question, what has Sauber heard that no one else has? DeBoer has faced some negative scrutiny after failing to make the playoff in year one after Nick Saban and again when they dropped the first game of the season to Florida State.
Considering that Lane Kiffin is a target for at least three different programs, November feels like the wishful thinking portion of this process. As more hirings are made to fill coaching vacancies, these concepts will start to line up. However, Kalen DeBoer leaving Alabama for Penn State seems wildly unlikely.
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